Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊

It’s May, and the first weekend of the month is coming, which means its the weekend to take advantage of Bank of America’s Museums on Us!

If you are a BofA or Merrill cardholder (debit or credit), you are eligible for this! Some museums have their own requirements, but usually, just show your BofA card at the ticketing desk and they’ll give you a free ticket.

I went to the MoMA in April for free, and plan on going to a bunch more museums in NYC! Do take advantage 👍️

In today’s edition:

• ✈️ 25% Off to Europe, May Edition 📆

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🤷 What is Happening at Emirates? 🤷

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

✈️ 25% Off to Europe, May Edition 📆

With May upon us, yes, Flying Blue’s monthly Promo Rewards are back!

If you haven’t seen the previous newsletters covering this: Flying Blue (mileage program of Air France and KLM) releases Flying Blue Promo Rewards, which are monthly promotions where routes between Europe and select destinations globally are offered for 25% off the original mileage price. Every month!

For this month, the US cities selected for this discount are Atlanta, Miami, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Boston, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.! ✈️

They do have deals across the globe though, with business class deals from Europe to the Caribbean and Africa! They’ve even got business class from Montreal to Europe as part of the deals for the month, with that starting at 45k miles using this deal! Lots of exciting flight routes in the offers for May!

So without these promo rewards, economy flights from North America to Europe start at 25k miles each way + taxes & fees. With the 25% off from these deals, that now goes down to 18.75k miles each way (same taxes & fees). I’ve used these deals to travel to Europe and back before too!

There’s also a 25% Chase transfer bonus to Flying Blue for the month! So to get an economy ticket for 18,750 Flying Blue miles, you only need to transfer 15k Chase points! That business class flight from Montreal to Europe will cost only 36k Chase points using this deal! 😮 

Remember, just because these deals come from Air France and KLM does not mean you have to go to France or the Netherlands! Their intra-European network is far and wide, and as long as your origin or destination is a city selected for this month’s discounts, you’ll get 25% off, no matter the European airport involved. 🇪🇺 

I covered this for the past few months, but the Air France-KLM World Elite Mastercard still has an elevated bonus of 70k miles and 100 XP (60 on approval, 40 after hitting minimum spend) after spending $3k in 3 months. The card also gives you 5k points if you spend $50 on it in a year, which definitely helps to offset the $89 annual fee! XP, by the way, are points to get Flying Blue status - getting and hitting the bonus on this card as it stands gives you 100XP, which immediately gets you Flying Blue Silver status. Worth a look if you have a use for the miles or the XP for Flying Blue status 💳️

Exciting stuff from Flying Blue for May - happy travels if you find and book something that works for you!

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

A chart of transfer partners by bank, along with other information, can be found here!

¹ Bilt Blue members get a 25% bonus, Bilt Silver members get a 50% bonus, Bilt Gold members get a 75% bonus and Bilt Platinum members get a 100% bonus!

² New transfer bonuses that were not present the week before are in bold.

🤷 What is Happening at Emirates? 🤷

A flurry of news regarding Emirates came out in recent weeks, none of it good:

• 📉 Citi’s transfer ratio to Emirates is being reduced from 1:1 to 5:4

• ⏸️ Amex and Chase transfers to Emirates will be paused at the end of May for tentatively about a month

And then on top of that, Capital One was offering an unannounced 25% transfer bonus to Emirates for a brief time earlier this week. Turns out that was in error, and Capital One is now clawing back the points from people who’ve taken advantage of this! What a horror show going on at Emirates right now…

What is going on here? Well, possible answers to this madness, ranging from somewhat optimistic to downright doom and gloom, include:

• A software/system update that requires the points transfers to be put on pause momentarily, according to a comment here

• Emirates is renegotiating its deal with the banks and is playing hardball (or just isn’t getting what it wants from the banks)

• Emirates is preparing to devalue their program 😱

• All of the above 💀

So yeah, this is a bit of a mystery right now. I can only hope that the resolution to this is good, or at least results in nothing changing for us consumers. But even if this were due to a software update, Citi reducing the transfer ratio permanently isn’t explained by that…

For reference, Emirates is not the best transfer partner out there, but the redemption opportunities from the East Coast were not bad at all:

• JFK to MXP, or EWR to ATH, for 17.5k miles one way

  • Or the same in Business for 87k miles one way or 108k roundtrip!

108k roundtrip in business class on Emirates is pretty awesome - for reference, Air France or KLM business from New York to Europe would be 120k roundtrip, so Emirates currently prices lower than that (do keep taxes and fees in mind though)! If you are interested to book this though, the pause does not go into effect until the end of May anyway, so do feel free to look for award availability and book this month!

Get your Emirates travel booked in May if you are looking, but otherwise, hope that nothing gets worse once whatever’s going on at Emirates gets fixed 🤞

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 🤝 JetBlue and United are expected to announce a partnership!

  • Alaska and Philippine Airlines have just announced theirs!

• ✈️ Breeze is back at it again, with 40% off base fares with code SPLASH

  • Southwest is offering 30% off base fares with code SUMMER30

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^® / Reserve®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

Do search for public links for the above cards to compare signup bonuses to make sure you get the highest one (incognito mode, Resy, etc.).

For cards with elevated signup bonuses (targeted bonuses are not included), I’ve got:

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

Thanks for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to helping you maximize your points and rewards, at no direct cost to you! (appreciate you using any of my referral links, though!)

If you do find this newsletter informative, helpful, or entertaining, I’d greatly appreciate you spreading the word about it! If not, please do give me feedback on how I can improve your Sense per Point experience.

Also, if my newsletter helps you to book travel using points, let me know! It’ll make me so happy 😄 

Hope that all makes sense! That’s all for this week’s edition of Sense per Point.

Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of your day and week 😊 

- Sean Kim

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